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He has always been a big fan and champion of crime novels so it is no surprise that his first novel is a thriller.

One of the more eloquent presidents of recent times, Mr Clinton has nevertheless wisely taken on the services of a professional wordsmith to help with the writing.

He has made the canniest possible choice of collaborator – mega-selling novelist James Patterson, thought to be the best-selling author alive.

Patterson knows how to make a story go so fast that you get to the end before you’ve barely registered reading the words “Chapter One”. And Patterson may help with getting sales as well as polishing the prose.

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The President Is Missing is former US president Bill Clinton’s first foray into fiction (Image: GETTY)

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He has sold more than 300 million books whereas Clinton never received more than a paltry 47 million votes in an election. Still, Clinton is the real draw on the title page.

This is a novel about a US president so readers will be hoping for plenty of juicy insights and insider gossip about what it’s really like to be the President of the United States, or Potus as he is commonly known. They may be disappointed.

There are anecdotes about White House wallpaper and so on which are presumably true but there is no real sense that Clinton is giving us exclusive access into anything we don’t already know about life at the White House.

Instead we get an enjoyably melodramatic yarn involving President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan who is distinctly Clinton-esque, apart from being a war hero and a widower.

BANNED: 17 classic books that were just TOO much

James Joyce's 'Ulysses' was banned in the UK and the USA until the 1930s on account of its sexually explicit content

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All of Franz Kafka's work, including 'The Metamorphosis', was banned under the Nazi and Soviet Regimes

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Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' was removed from the shelves in South Africa in 1955 for its obscene and explicit content

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Despite being made into a big blockbuster film, 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' was withdrawn from many U.S. libraries because of its explicit homosexual content

'The Diary of Anne Frank' was banned in Lebanon for protraying Jews favourably

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Vonnegut's classic novel was banned in schools across the U.S. for its inapropriate content

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Dan Brown's bestseller was banned in Lebanon in 2004 for being offensive to Christianity

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Gustave Flaubert was prosecuted for 'offences against public morals' in 1957, following the publication of his novel 'Madame Bovary'

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French officials banned Nabokov's Lolita for its explicit content and themes

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D.H. Lawrence's steamy classic was banned until the 1960s in both the UK and USA for obscenity

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Jackie Collins' Bonkbuster was banned in Australia for explicit content

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In 1873, Chaucer's famous Canterbury Tales were banned from entering the U.S. mail under their anti-obscenity law

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Lewis Carroll's classic was banned in China in 1931 for its representation of animals

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John Steibeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' was banned in California for its unflattering portrayal of residents

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Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel 'The Well of Loneliness' was banned in the UK upon publication because of it contained homosexual themes and references. The ban was later lifted in 1949

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(No snarky comments about this being a work of wish fulfilment, please.)

The US is in grave danger from an imminent cyber attack and, for various unlikely reasons, President Duncan has to escape his security detail, adopt a disguise and set off after the pesky terrorists himself.

Throw in a smouldering assassin who describes herself as “a tall, leggy, busty red-head, hiding in plain sight” and you have the ingredients for a deliciously silly potboiler.

There are a few too many sermons about the debasement of modern political discourse.

“We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations,” Duncan complains, declaring that “emotion trumps evidence” (and note that verb).

You get the impression that this is the price Patterson has to pay to work with his star collaborator. But the normal Patterson arrangement of no-frills storytelling is always quickly resumed.

Like most of Patterson’s books, this is a friction-free read that is difficult to put down and instantly forgettable the moment you’ve finished it.